Zerohash provides embedded infrastructure for cryptoasset trading, stablecoin payments, custody, settlement and tokenisation to brokers, banks and fintech platforms. The end user may contract separately with a Zerohash entity even though the service appears inside a partner's application.
According to company data as of August 2026, the infrastructure had processed more than $65bn of settled volume and served about 7mn end clients. Publicly disclosed partners include Interactive Brokers, E*TRADE/Morgan Stanley, Stripe, tastytrade and Franklin Templeton.
Company, funding and licences
The founder and CEO is Edward Woodford, a graduate of Warwick (PPE) and MIT (Master of Finance). In 2015, together with Brian Liston, he founded the institutional crypto exchange Seed CX in Chicago on Bain Capital Ventures money; the settlement subsidiary Zero Hash appeared in 2017. In June 2020 the company closed the exchange and rebuilt itself entirely around the settlement business — after which the company focused on B2B infrastructure for third-party platforms.
Capital for the model was gathered in stages — two closed rounds with different leads.
| Round | Amount | Lead and participants | Valuation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series D, January 2022 | $105mn | Bain Capital Ventures (lead), Point72 Ventures, Nyca Partners | not disclosed |
| Round, 23 September 2025 | $104mn | Interactive Brokers (lead), Morgan Stanley, Apollo, SoFi | $1bn |
Around ≈$275mn has been raised in total; the cap table holds Jump Crypto, IMC, PEAK6 and Northwestern Mutual — market makers and institutions that use these rails themselves.
In 2025–2026 the company discussed a strategic transaction and additional financing: Mastercard was in acquisition talks, but Zerohash walked away from the deal and in January 2026 was discussing a ≈$250mn round at $1.5bn. Mastercard bought rival BVNK in March, while Zerohash, according to CoinDesk on 19.05.2026, carried on raising capital at a valuation over $1.5bn, now without the card network on the investor list.
Key parameters of the provider as of August 2026.
| Model | Embedded B2B behind a partner's interface: trading, custody, payments, settlement, tokenisation |
|---|---|
| US licences | FinCEN MSB, money transmitter in 51 jurisdictions (NMLS 1699379), BitLicense, North Carolina trust charter |
| Non-US licences | Canada, Australia, Bermuda, Argentina; MiCA from the AFM, EMI from DNB |
| OCC status | The national trust bank charter application of 04.03.2026 is still in the queue |
| Client pricing | Spread of 100–400 bps plus the platform's fee; retail benchmark 50 bps per trade |
| Scale | Over $65bn of settled volume and about 7mn end clients |
| Asset protection | No FDIC or SIPC cover; the regime is set by segregation and partner disclosures |
Products and pricing
The line-up as of August 2026 comes in three blocks. Trading: embeddable buy/sell across 100+ assets, staking, qualified custody and lending infrastructure. Transact: on/off-ramps, stablecoin pay-ins and payouts (USDC, USDT, PYUSD, RLUSD on 15+ blockchains), account funding and remittance rails. Tokenize: an engine for tokenising funds and assets; claimed coverage is over 200 jurisdictions.
Public client cases relate to the same product categories. Interactive Brokers trades eight coins through Zerohash (BTC, ETH, SOL, ADA, XRP, DOGE, LTC, BCH): the case study records a 12-week launch, $216mn of volume in Q3 2025 alone (+809% year on year) and an EEA rollout from March 2026. tastytrade has been on these rails since December 2020 (then still branded tastyworks) and expanded its asset line-up on 19 March 2025. Morgan Stanley through E*TRADE is the largest banking case: BTC, ETH and SOL for the entire retail book since July 2026.
The payments block: Stripe's fiat-to-crypto onramp is assembled on four Zerohash API endpoints — a purchase takes up to 30 seconds, while Stripe keeps acquiring, KYC and anti-fraud in-house. Franklin Templeton has used Zerohash's USDC rails since June 2024 to fund its tokenised fund on the Benji platform. MoonPay relies on Zerohash inside the US perimeter, Kalshi accepts USDC deposits through it (per the company itself, the first wave brought ≈$25mn), and DraftKings launched staking on Polygon over these rails as far back as 2021.
Pricing model
There is no public price list (as of August 2026) — pricing is agreed with each platform, but the mechanics are disclosed in the documentation: the trade price is made up of a spread to the quote plus the platform's fee — a flat charge per trade or a percentage of volume, up to tiered grids by order size. The European disclosures give working spread corridors of roughly 100–400 bps depending on volatility and the duration of the quote; the retail benchmark is E*TRADE at 50 bps per trade. Revenue and take-rate estimates from secondary sources are not company disclosures and should not be treated as confirmed pricing.
Competitive landscape
The infrastructure market splits into three models. Custodians under their own brand: Anchorage Digital with a federal charter since January 2021, BitGo and Fidelity Digital Assets. Issuers and white-label stablecoin issuance: Paxos (PYUSD for PayPal), Circle, Ripple. Technology vendors: Fireblocks sells MPC wallets and self-custody software to over 1,500 institutions, with the client bringing its own licensing wrapper.
Zerohash combines licences, liquidity, custody, settlement and tokenisation behind a partner's interface. This can reduce a platform's time to launch but creates dependency on one infrastructure provider for multiple regulated and operational functions.
A separate issue is the application for a federal trust charter: on 12 December 2025 the OCC issued conditional approvals to Circle, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo and Fidelity Digital Assets, while Coinbase and Bridge (a Stripe subsidiary) were not in that first batch and came through later — Bridge with a conditional approval on 17 February 2026 (CD #1365), Coinbase in April 2026; Circle reached final approval on 10 July 2026. The full status ladder is kept in the OCC national trust charter. Zerohash filed later than that group of five — on 4 March 2026 — and as of August 2026 is still in the queue.
Contractual chain and end-client protection
When a broker offers embedded crypto, the client should identify the contractual operator, custodian and settlement provider. At several public partners that role is performed by Zero Hash LLC or another group entity. At onboarding the end user accepts a separate user agreement with Zero Hash LLC — that is how it works at MoonPay, E*TRADE and other partners — and the custody chain turns out to be longer than the app suggests. E*TRADE's disclaimers say it plainly: digital assets held at Zero Hash are covered by neither FDIC nor SIPC.
Before onboarding, review the user agreement, named custodian, segregation terms, withdrawal rights, applicable insurance and insolvency provisions. The OCC application is not a federal charter unless and until final approval is granted, and it does not change the current contractual regime.
For a platform client, embedded infrastructure can shorten the implementation period. Interactive Brokers launched regulated crypto trading in 12 weeks against the typical 12–18 months of in-house development, and the onboarding time for its end clients fell from 59 to 15 days, while Stripe's case study explains the choice directly as an unwillingness to wait 12–24 months for a licence portfolio of its own.
Technology and regulatory structure
The integration is typical for infrastructure SaaS: two environments — Cert (a sandbox with mock balances) and Prod — a REST API with cryptographically signed requests plus a front-end SDK with ready-made KYC widgets; the documentation walks through the chain onboarding → deposit → trade → settlement. A platform can keep KYC in-house (the Stripe option) or hand it to the backend as KYCaaS — in the latter case Zerohash also collects end clients' tax data.
Licences and OCC status
The regulatory frame: FinCEN MSB, money transmitter licences in 51 US jurisdictions (NMLS 1699379), a NYDFS BitLicense, a North Carolina trust charter, and registrations in Canada (FINTRAC), Australia, Bermuda and Argentina (VASP, May 2025). The European perimeter was assembled in a year: MiCA authorisation from the Dutch AFM in October 2025 and an EMI licence from the central bank DNB in May 2026 — the first case of a MiCA firm adding e-money issuer status for stablecoin settlement across the EEA.
On 4 March 2026 the company filed an application with the OCC for a "zerohash national trust bank" charter. A federal wrapper would bring custody and stablecoin operations under the GENIUS Act into a single licence and remove the annual chore of renewing some fifty state permissions.
The main risks of the model include: capital-intensive compliance, years spent maintaining the MTL stack, and revenue dependence on a handful of anchor partners — the departure of a single brand at Morgan Stanley's level would show in the P&L. Where a strategic investor, prospective buyer and commercial partner overlap, governance and pricing conflicts require separate management.
Regulation and status
The chronology of the key milestones — from the pivot to the OCC application.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| June 2020 | The pivot from the Seed CX exchange into a settlement backend |
| 23.09.2025 | A $104mn round and unicorn status |
| October 2025 | MiCA authorisation in the EU |
| January 2026 | Withdrawal from acquisition talks with Mastercard |
| 04.03.2026 | The application for an OCC national trust charter |
| May 2026 | The DNB EMI licence and, reportedly, a new round at a valuation over $1.5bn |
| 16.07.2026 | Completion of the E*TRADE rollout |
The OCC decision is still ahead, and the backdrop is contradictory: Comptroller Jonathan Gould publicly welcomes new entrants into the federal banking system, while the Bank Policy Institute and the banking associations demand a tighter framework for crypto trusts. Until the verdict the company works on its state licensing base — the protection regime for end-client assets is set by the states and by the text of the disclosures.
Q/A
My broker launched crypto — what does Zerohash have to do with it?
Large brokers and payment companies switch crypto on through a white-label backend. At Interactive Brokers, tastytrade, Stripe, Franklin Templeton and Morgan Stanley's E*TRADE that role is played by Zerohash: trades, storage and settlement run on its infrastructure, the interface stays with the broker, and at onboarding the user accepts a separate agreement with Zero Hash LLC.
How much does it cost the end client?
The partner platform sets the tariff: the typical construction is a spread to the quote plus a fee per trade, either flat or as a percentage of volume. Zerohash's European disclosures show spreads of roughly 100–400 bps; the public retail benchmark is E*TRADE at 50 bps per trade (as of August 2026), and the figures differ at other brands.
How protected are the assets if the provider runs into trouble?
Crypto assets on these rails are covered by neither FDIC nor SIPC — the partners' disclaimers state that plainly. The protection regime is determined by account segregation and by the disclosure text of the specific product, so it has to be checked brand by brand; a federal trust charter, if granted, would unify that framework.
Why does Zerohash want a federal trust charter?
The application to the OCC was filed on 4 March 2026. A national trust charter would replace the patchwork of some fifty state licences with a single federal framework, strengthen the custody position in institutional eyes and open up stablecoin operations under the GENIUS Act. Race context: Circle, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo and Fidelity received conditional approvals back on 12 December 2025, so Zerohash is catching up.
How does a fintech connect and who does the KYC?
Integration runs through the Cert sandbox and the Prod production environment: a REST API, a front-end SDK and ready-made flows for onboarding → deposit → trade → settlement. KYC can stay in-house, as at Stripe, or be handed to Zerohash as KYCaaS. The timing benchmark is Interactive Brokers, which launched regulated trading in 12 weeks.